1. Field
The present disclosure is related to the aircraft maintenance systems, and in particular, to systems for detecting latent faults on an aircraft.
2. Related Art
The advent of digital electronic technology in electrical and electronic systems has enabled unprecedented expansion of aircraft system functionality and evolution of aircraft function automation. As a result, systems incorporating such technology are utilized more and more to implement aircraft functions, including systems that affect the safe operation of the aircraft.
The electromagnetic environment includes energy which is the same type of energy (i.e., electrical energy) that is used by electrical and electronic equipment to process and transfer information. As such, this environment may represent a hindrance to the proper operation of systems that depend on such equipment causing latent faults within the systems of an aircraft.
Unfortunately, at present, a large cost in designing and building a commercial aircraft is providing redundant systems to deal with situations where a fault occurs when there is an undiscovered latent fault in the same system. In general, aircraft certification requires addressing latent faults and one specific latent fault that needs to be considered is possibly abraded wires in the fuel tank of an aircraft. More specifically, abraded insulation on wires in the fuel tank of the aircraft in combination with a lightning strike, static charge during fueling, or charge from another abraded wire could cause an electrical arc through the abraded location.
Known approaches to address this issue have included aircraft manufactures installing numerous extra wire mounting brackets to maintain separation between wires, and to mandate more frequent inspections inside the fuel tank of an aircraft. Some of the problems associated with these approaches includes, for example, the substantial added cost of installation and inspection of adding extra brackets that are placed in the aircraft to keep wires away from each other and from any other conductive materials. The extra weight of such brackets can add to the total weight of the aircraft. Moreover, the added costs, difficulty, and resulting downtime of inspecting these wires in the field which may include emptying the fuel tanks and sending people and/or inspection equipment physically into the fuel tanks to visually inspect the wires. As a result, the aircraft must be removed from service for the inspection, the labor cost of performing the inspection may be high, and the burden of safety and proper ergonomic techniques used during the physical inspection may be substantial.
As such, there is a need for a system and method that addresses these problems and detects the abraded insulation cheaply and reliably enough to, among other benefits, eliminate the need for the extra brackets and most of the physical inspections of the wires within the fuel tank of the aircraft.